Chalk lines

[Ivan Cloherty]

Should be chalk lines and other oddities.

Mainly for us deckies, remember coating a long line in chalk, and bosun at one end and cadet/ab/sos or another at the other end and the bosun twanging the line to get an impression on the hull so we could paint a straight line twixt hull colour and boot topping, wonder what they use now with hulls over a 1000 feet long

[James Curry]

A longer piece of string I suppose.

[Ivan Cloherty]

A longer piece of string I suppose.

Could be! but the angle of twangle may not equal the angle of dangle

[Keith Tindell]

Ivan, i think the system is widely used in the building trade, i have used it myself renewing the guttering on the house, some years ago when i was much younger. You can in fact purchase the chalk line kit fro Screwfix and other hardware stores. One wonders who first thought of it, kt

[James Curry]

A famous strike in Cammel Larids was caused by the wrong fella twanging the string in the plating shop. Boiler makers and platers never liked each other.

Brick layers also use the string line to keep the bricks level while building

[Ivan Cloherty]

I still use one on certain jobs, but how do they get those straight lines over 1000 feet, a piece of string that long would sag under its own weight, suppose lasers are involved these days, just curious, and I'm not even a cat!

[Keith Tindell]

One of life's pondurables Ivan, as i get older i find more and more pondurables, and there's me having trouble to bend down and tie my shoe laces !!!, thank god for velcro

[Roger Millard]

plum bomb from the waterline, providing no one is ballasting or working cargo. Roger.

[Ivan Cloherty]

plum bomb from the waterline, providing no one is ballasting or working cargo. Roger.

Some how Roger I line don't think the chalk would stick if using from the waterline but I see where you are coming from, using various vertical measurements from the top of the sheerstrake (the uppermost strake of any hull) to mark positions on the hull and then join the dots

[Roger Millard]

That was my way of thinking Ivan, was it by practical assessment or mind reading. or being nautical a lead line which would soon fathom it. R